I guess they mixed up that “Miracle of Life” video with Ridley Scott’s “Alien” in your seventh grade class. 
Sexual mystique? Sheesh, who needs it. Personally, I have a plan to bus entire classes of high school students into delivery rooms all over the nation. If that’s not useful sex education, I don’t know what is. I bet we would see a meteoric rise in responsible sexual decision making from day one.
I’d probably have a hard time getting the mothers to cooperate, though.
(Also, of course, the students would probably be traumatized. But hey, we have shrinks for that…)
Probably the stratagem I would adopt.
A tip from a husband who has been there (and both my wife and I are very happy that I was):
When it comes to the delivery process, you wife has two important parts. There is the head part and there is the other part. The doctors and nurses are busy taking care of the other part. Your job is to completely ignore the other part and concentrate on the head part. This is an important job and there’s nobody else around to do it.
Gaze directly into her eyes and keep telling her how wonderfully she’s doing. Let her grab your hand and try to ignore the fact that she’s squeezing the circulation right out of it - believe me, she’s going through a lot worse than you are. Whatever you do, do*** not*** look at the other part - there’s blood and gore and all sorts of messy stuff going on down there and if you’re a pansy like me you’re likely to faint when you see what’s going on and that’s not a good thing.
I felt like a complete, incompetent fool during the entire delivery process. My wife was obviously delerious from the pain because she only remembers that I was magnificent.
Well, at least I didn’t faint.
I was with my wife for five deliveries (four children all adults now, and one still-born). I think it was good for me to be there – but, what’s more important, it was very good for my wife to have me there providing a little support.
You know, I was prepared for all the horrors, the rushing to-and-fro, even the fact that giving birth to a kid makes the woman crap as the kid is, you know, pressing against the colon while moving forward.
Yeah, got all that.
What I wasn’t prepared for was the woman I call the “lube nurse” whose job was to take about a gallon of KY jelly, start slathering it over the lady bits, and then working her hands to, er, stretch out the “birth canal” as to ease passage - my own first-time live exposure to the joys of “gape porn”.
My eyes widening as she was doing this, I finally leaned over to her and said “Hey, lady - I plan on using that thing later on, OK, so ease up a bit.”
Fortunately she had a sense of humor.
To this day, I’m not too sure if Laura knew of this woman’s existence. To this day, I’m afraid to ask her.
I’m with Rita Rudner’s husband, whom she quoted as saying
My husband not only wanted to be there, he wanted to help the doctor. I was lying there, all exhausted and raggedy right after our daughter was born, and the new father was discussing the afterbirth with the doctor. The more I think about it, the funnier it is to me.
Frankly, I’m just glad that he didn’t take a video camera in the delivery room…
I would have been so heartbroken to not be there to meet my little girl. I cannot understand why you’d want to miss that.
Yeah, it’s messy. Big deal, people are messy.
It’s not. Glad I could help out.
You didn’t. Glad I could clear that up.
I should add as an afterthought that, as I had myself child-proofed, the question is entirely moot where I’m concerned, unless they develop some painless way I can help my friends with their attempt to conceive.
If you’re so grossed out at the thought of something passing through your wife’s vagina, I encourage you to adopt. Because, whether your witness it or not, birth means that a whole lot of weird and horrific shit is going to happen to your wife’s vagina over the nine months of pregnancy, the however many hours of labor, and the weeks after that kid is born. You don’t think everything goes right back to being all tight and sexy, do you? The most common complaint from my friends that have kids, post delivery, is that their labia looks like horrible, swollen taffy for a while after.
I don’t mind if you disagree with me. That’s what this poll is for. Lecturing me is another matter. I’m not interested in that.
Obviously I do disagree, but my intent isn’t to lecture. Rather, I’m just saying that your logic isn’t entirely sound. Her vagina is going to be pretty beat up whether your witness the actual act or not. Even if you’re not in the room, you’re going to see some icky things over all those months that may also change your opinion of your wife’s feminine mystique.
Anyone who wants to see the ‘crowning’ can go watch Knocked Up and get half the experience…
There goes your mystical vagina…
I think it is the best bonding that can ever happen to a couple…
Honestly, the six weeks post birth–a blurry period of discovery, wonder, frustration, and sleep deprivation–serve as a very strong emotional reboot for all that stuff. By the time you can be sexy again, the delivery is something that happened a thousand years ago to a couple of strangers. You are totally new people rediscovering each other.
But there is one really compelling reason to be there: things don’t always go well, and sometimes they go pear-shaped very quickly. If your wife or baby’s life is suddenly on the line, don’t you want to be right there to support each other?
I had a baby two and a half weeks ago, and my totally routine, totally textbook delivery turned into an emergency c-section in about 5 mintues. Because it was so fast, they had to use general anesthetic and my husband wasn’t allowed back in the operating room with me. I have never in my life been as terrified as I was for that period of time between when they wheeled me away and when the anesthetic kicked in. I cannot put into words how badly I needed him there to hold my hand. If he had been absent not because of medical necessity but because of squemishness . . . I would have had a lot of trouble forgiving him for that.
You realize they routed a sewer line through there, don’t you?
My wife has a graduate degree in reproductive physiology, so she wanted to see the afterbirth. As for me, I was concentrating on our new baby. Getting to hold your new child right away makes up for a lot.
For our first, my wife started to throw up with her first contraction, so we entered the hospital with a bowl (which gets you out of the lobby really, really fast). She spewed various liquids in all directions. (Not on me, but on the doctor.) At the moment you are not thinking sex. I certainly had no issue with any of it, but I’m not very averse to bodily secretions. You need to be there to hold her hand, give her ice chips, and be her champion. And to take the abuse that is sure to come.
It is true that in the 1950s men weren’t involved,. but when I was born my mother was hardly involved at all, since, as I understand it, they liked to knock the woman out so she wouldn’t get in the way of the doctors during her own delivery. I think we have it better.
BTW, even 30 years ago the maternity waiting room had shrunk to almost nothing, and I never saw anyone there when I went to use the phone or something.
Mommy, make her stop.
That’s a fact!
I don’t know from ‘mystique’ but whatever there was from it didn’t suffer from witnessing the deliveries. The ages of bloody discharge and continuing persistence of torn inner labia, on the other hand - pretending that never fased me at all is a full time method acting exercise.
When you get there, hold her hand, rub her back, offer verbal support. That’s easy. It’s just a few hours. The important thing to remember: even if years have passed and you have had a couple of beers, you must never exclaim “OH MY GOD WHAT HAPPENED TO YOUR VAG?” when it’s in your face.
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